MF EXPLAINS IT ALL

There’s a historical reason, but there may be a social one as well.

Consumer tastes have shifted over the past 20 years.

Suggestions for what to call the period of time from 2000–2009 ranged from ‘the nillies’ and ‘the oh-ohs’ to ‘the double zeroes’ and ‘the noughties.’ So how’d we land on ‘the aughts’?

Pick-up truck beds are here to make your life easier—if you know how to use them.

Cricket chirps can reach 100 decibels. So why do we use them as a byword for ‘silence’?

‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ is a fairy tale with a long history. But Goldilocks as we know her didn‘t originally appear in the popular children‘s story.

If you thought the fluorescent marker balls had something to do with increasing visibility, you were right.

The key to holding court? A fresh can of tennis balls.

The concave circles built into the sides of plastic milk jugs are an important part of their design.

Horizontal lines run across the rear glass on most cars. Here's why.

All locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts.

Although “Jack Sprat” may not be in the nursery rhyme limelight, the two theories behind its meaning—both of which involve royalty—are just as interesting as the origins of better-known rhymes.